Michael Jackson spam spreads, malware attacks!!!
Within hours of the death of pop star Michael Jackson, spam trading on his demise hit in-boxes, a security firm said today as it warned that more junk mail was in the offing.
Just eight hours after news broke about Jackson, Abingdon, England-based Sophos PLC started tracking the first wave of Jackson spam, which used a subject line of “Confidential — Michael Jackson.” The spam wasn’t pitching a product or leading users to a phishing or malware Web site. Instead it was trying to dupe users into replying to the message in order to collect e-mail addresses and verify them as legitimate.
The body of the spam message does not contain any call-to-action link such as a URL, e-mail or phone number. But the spammer can harvest receivers’ e-mail addresses via a free live e-mail address if the spam message is replied to.
Actually, spammers and hackers have done Jackson before. Several years ago they pitched a breaking news story, claiming that he had attempted suicide.
The timing of that campaign was not coincidental: It followed Jackson’s acquittal on charges in child sexual abuse. Scammers and hackers often trade on tragedies to get people to click links. In that case, users were hit with a hacker tool kit that tried several exploits against Internet Explorer.
Users who click on the supposed codec update link are, in fact, then infected with attack code, often a bot that hijacks their computer. Users should also beware of results from searches they run using the singer’s name. Criminals will create pages with keywords and news stories, sometimes even legitimate stories, to get to the top of the search lists. When you go to one of those sites, you’ll get hit with malware.
In the case of the Fawcett search engine manipulations, sites that gamed Google, for instance, led users to fake antivirus software sites, which lied to users, telling them that they were infected with malicious code.
Another tactic that cybercriminals have used with celebrity deaths, said Cluley, is what he called “tribute spam.”
Similar schemes may soon be launched to take advantage of the interest in Jackson. If you want to buy some Jackson merchandise, do it from Amazon or iTunes, not some site you’ve never heard of.
original article source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134895&source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2009-06-26
Tags: Computer Service, Computer Tips, Spyware Cleaning, Virus Cleaning
